Mr. Cartaret sat in his study, manfully enduring the Pathetic Sonata.
He was no musician and he did not certainly know when Alice went
wrong; therefore, except that it had some nasty loud moments, he could
not honestly say that the First Movement was disturbing. Besides, he
had scored. He had made Alice change her tune.
Wisdom and patience required that he should be satisfied, so far. And,
being satisfied, in the sense that he no longer had a grievance, meant
that he was very badly bored.
He began to fidget. He took his legs out of the fender and put them
back again. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, but
without relief. He turned over his _Spectator_ to see what it had to
say about the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, and found that he was not
interested in what it had to say. He looked at his watch and
compared it with the clock in the faint hope that the clock might be
behindhand.
The watch and clock both agreed that it was not a minute later than
fifteen minutes to ten. A whole quarter of an hour before Prayer-time.
There was nothing but Prayer-time to look forward to.
He began to fidget again. He filled his pipe and thought better about
smoking it. Then he rang the bell for his glass of water.
After more delay than was at all necessary Essy appeared, bringing the
glass of water on a plate.
She came in, soft-footed, almost furtive, she who used to enter so
suddenly and unabashed. She put the plate down on the roll-top desk
and turned softly, furtively, away.
The Vicar looked up. His eyes were large and blue as suspicion drew in
the black of their pupils.
"Put it down here," he said, and he indicated the ledge of the bureau.
Essy stood still and stared like a half-wild creature in doubt as to
its way. She decided to make for the bureau by rounding the roll-top
desk on the far side, thus approaching her master from behind.
"What are you doing?" said the Vicar. "I said, Put it down here."
Essy turned again and came forward, tilting the plate a little in her
nervousness. The large blue eyes, the stern voice, fascinated her,
frightened her.
The Vicar looked at her steadily, remorselessly, as she came.
Essy's lowered eyelids had kept the stain of her tears. Her thick
brown hair was loose and rumpled under her white cap. But she had put
on a clean, starched apron. It stood out stiffly, billowing, from
her waist. Essy had not always been so careless about her hair or so
fastidious as to her aprons. There was a little strained droop at the
corners of her tender mouth, as if they had been tied with string. Her
dark eyes still kept their young largeness and their light, but they
looked as if they had been drawn tight with string at their corners
too.
All these signs the Vicar noted as he stared. And he hated Essy. He
hated her for what he saw in her, and for her buxom comeliness, and
for the softness of her youth.
"Did I hear young Greatorex round at the back door this evening?" he
said.
Essy started, slanting her plate a little more.
"I doan knaw ef I knaw, sir."
"Either you know or you don't know," said the Vicar.
"I doan know, I'm sure, sir," said Essy.
The Vicar was holding out his hand for his glass of water, and Essy
pushed the plate toward him, so blindly and at such a perilous slant
that the glass slid and toppled over and broke itself against the
Vicar's chair.
Essy gave a little frightened cry.
"Clever girl. She did that on purpose," said the Vicar to himself.
Essy was on her knees beside him, picking up the bits of glass and
gathering them in her apron. She was murmuring, "I'll mop it oop. I'll
mop it oop."
"That'll do," he said roughly. "That'll do, I tell you. You can go."
Essy tried to go. But it was as if her knees had weights on them
that fixed her to the floor. Holding up her apron with one hand, she
clutched the arm of her master's chair with the other and dragged
herself to her feet.
"I'll mop it oop," she repeated, shamefast.
"I told you to go," said the Vicar.
"I'll fetch yo anoother glass?" she whispered. Her voice was hoarse
with the spasm in her throat.
"No," said the Vicar.
Essy slunk back into her kitchen with terror in her heart.
X
_"Attacca subito l'Allegro."_
Alice had fallen on it suddenly.
"I suppose," said Mary, "it's a relief to her to make that row."
"It isn't," said Gwenda. "It's torture. That's how she works herself
up. She's playing on her own nerves all the time. If she really
_could_ play----If she cared about the music----If she cared about
anything on earth except----"
She paused.
"Molly, it must be awful to be made like that."
"Nothing could be worse for her than being shut up here."
"I know. Papa's been a frightful fool about her. After all, Molly,
what did she do?"
"She did what you and I wouldn't have done."
"How do you know what you wouldn't have done? How do I know? If we'd
been in her place----"
"If _I'd_ been in her place I'd have died rather."
"How do you know Ally wouldn't have rather died if she could have
chosen? She didn't want to fall in love with that young ass, Rickards.
And I don't see what she did that was so very awful."
"She managed to let everybody else see, anyhow."
"What if she did? At least she was honest. She went straight for what
she wanted. She didn't sneak and scheme to get him from any other
girl. And she hadn't a mother to sneak and scheme _for_ her. That's
fifty times worse, yet it's done every day and nobody thinks anything
of it."
She went on. "Nobody would have thought anything as it was, if Papa
hadn't been such a frantic fool about it. It he'd had the pluck to
stand by her, if he'd kept his head and laughed in their silly faces,
instead of grizzling and growling and stampeding out of the parish as
if poor Ally had disgraced him."
"Well--it isn't a very pleasant thing for the Vicar of the parish----"
"It wasn't a very pleasant thing for any of us. But it was beastly of
him to go back on her like that. And the silliness of it! Caring so
frightfully about what people think, and then going on so as to make
them think it."
"Think what?"
"That she really _had_ done something."
"Do you suppose they did?"
"Yes. You can't blame them. He couldn't have piled it on more if she
_had_. It's enough to make her."
"Oh Gwenda!"
"It would be his own fault. Just as it's his own fault that he hates
her."
"He doesn't hate her. He's fond of all of us, in his way."
"Wot of Ally. Don't you know why? He can't look at her without
thinking of how awful _he_ is."
"And if he _is_--a little----You forget what he's had to go through."
"You mean Mummy running away from him?"
"Yes. And Mamma's dying. And before that--there was Mother."
Gwenda raised her head.
"He killed Mother."
"What do you mean?"
"He did. He was told that Mother would die or go mad if she had
another baby. And he let her have Ally. No wonder Mummy ran away from
him."
"Who told you that story?"
"Mummy."
"It was horrid of her."
"Everything poor Mummy did was horrid. It was horrid of her to run
away from him, I suppose."
"Why did you tell me that? I didn't know it. I'd rather not have
known."
"Well, now you do know, perhaps you'll be sorrier for Ally."
"I am sorry for Ally. But I'm sorry for Papa, too. You're not."
"I'd be sorry for him right enough if he wasn't so sorry for himself."
"Gwenda, _you're_ awful."
"Because I won't waste my pity? Ally's got nothing--He's got
everything."
"Not what he cares most for."
"He cares most for what people think of him. Everybody thought him a
good kind husband. Everybody thinks him a good kind father."
* * * * *
The music suddenly ceased. A sound of voices came instead of it.
"There," said Gwenda. "He's gone in and stopped her."
He had, that time.
And in the sudden ceasing of the Pathetic Sonata the three sisters
heard the sound of wheels and the clank of horseshoes striking
together.
Mr. Greatorex was not yet dead of his pneumonia. The doctor had passed
the Vicarage gate.